COLUMBUS, Ohio – A well-connected former lobbyist, sentenced in 2023 to five years in prison after jurors found he bribed a political operative with $15,000 for private campaign information, argued to appellate judges last week that he did nothing illegal.
Matt Borges, once the chairman of the Ohio Republican Party who later worked as a political operative for FirstEnergy Solutions, told judges on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that prosecutors relied on Borges’ use of moblike language in text messages rather than their underlying substance when they accused him of racketeering.
“He was a lobbyist, not a politician,” Borges’ attorney Dennis Belli wrote. “He did not accept money to facilitate the passage of [House Bill] 6. He held no public office and had no ability to engage in official action. After passage of HB6, Borges worked as a private actor to defeat an effort by a group (funded by natural gas-utility interests) to repeal the legislation. The gravamen of his wrongdoing was offering a payment to an employee of a private corporation for so-called ‘inside’ information.”
Borges, 52, was one of the initial five men arrested in July 2020, alongside ex-House Speaker Larry Householder. Prosecutors say Householder, a Glenford Republican, led a scheme in which he secretly accepted $60 million from Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. into a nonprofit he controlled to spend for personal use and to engineer his rise to power. In exchange, Householder championed HB6, legislation that bailed out two nuclear plants owned by a FirstEnergy subsidiary to the tune of more than $1.3 billion.
Last year, prosecutors presented to jurors evidence that Borges, hired by the company after HB6 passed to guard it against a repeal effort, deployed dirty political tricks and tapped into his personal political connections to protect the new law. That included paying a $15,000 bribe to a repeal campaign operative for information on whether the organizers had gathered enough signatures to put the issue on a general election ballot; hiring private investigators to track political operatives affiliated with the repeal campaign; pushing Attorney General Dave Yost toward different legal interpretations to benefit FirstEnergy; organizing political contributions to allies who “helped” the company, and others.
“Characterizing Borges’ lobbying activity as ‘pressuring’ the state’s chief lawyer is pure drivel,” his attorney wrote. “Borges did not hold an official position in state government. He therefore had no bully pulpit from which to pressure anyone. The government did not claim, much less prove, that Borges’ contacts with the Ohio Attorney General exceeded the normal activities of a lobbyist.”
Prosecutors, in a responsive filing, dismissed Borges’ arguments. They recited the trial evidence, an array of undercover recordings, text messages, and testimony from a FirstEnergy Solutions lobbyist and the operative who accepted Borges’ bribe at the behest of the FBI.
The jury, prosecutors say, convicted Borges because he knowingly participated in a pattern of illegal activity on behalf of a criminal enterprise. They said Borges didn’t identify any significant legal error, and the evidence against him was overwhelming.
Borges is currently housed at FCI Milan, a federal prison outside Detroit. He’s scheduled for release July 4, 2027.
Both Borges and Householder, who is serving a 20-year sentence, have filed appeals with the Sixth Circuit since they were convicted. The two men are the only defendants thus far to serve time in prison. Two men who pleaded guilty to racketeering in October 2020 – Householder political adviser Jeff Longstreth and FirstEnergy Solutions lobbyist Juan Cespedes – have not yet been sentenced. Two others accused in the scandal pleaded not guilty to related charges but died by suicide before trial. That includes Public Utilities Commission of Ohio chairman Sam Randazzo, who was accused of taking a $4.3 million bribe from FirstEnergy before, among other favors, helping draft and pass HB6 from inside state government. FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and senior vice president Mike Dowling have pleaded not guilty to state bribery charges and await trial.
FirstEnergy Corp., as a corporate entity, in July 2021 signed a deferred prosecution agreement with the prosecution. In addition to paying a $230 million penalty, the company admitted to Jones and Dowling waging campaigns to bribe both Randazzo and Householder. Barring action from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio, that argument is set to expire this month, at which time the government would drop a charge of honest services wire fraud against the company.